A Bee, See?

You know about Colony Collapse right? It's a phenomenon in which worker bees abruptly disappear, leaving behind a dead hive. In certain parts of the world hive mortality has reached 50% and no one understands why. Unfortunately for you and me no amount of recycling or walking to work or low-flow toilets will help the bees. This sad dilemma is totally in the hands of researchers who I'm sure are working as hard as they can to find the answer to Colony Collapse. Good luck with that, chaps.

It's going to be a sad day in the future, if and when all the bees disappear, when we can only share anecdotes with our children about a friendly little species of insects who would dance for one another and whose labors resulted in fields flush with colorful flowers. Hell, they'd even use their own bodies to form an emergency beard for us should the need arise.

However, our kids will probably look as us like we're nuts when we tell them the bees also pooped candy... and that it was delicious!

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I wrote today's gag about bees late Wednesday night. On Thursday morning I visited one of my favorite sciencey web sites, PZ Myers Pharyngula, and I was delighted to find that he was featuring a fascinating story about bees.

How synchronistically cool!

It seems a beekeeper placed a large bell jar over an opening in a beehive, just to see what the little critters would do. It turns out they did something fascinating. Follow the bee link above to see what I mean.

=Lefty=